The effects of marital conflict and abuse on children : a pastoral care approach

Abstract

Traumatic conflict, abuse and violence within a marriage affect the children negatively. These children may develop signs associated with PTSD and maladjusted behavior in their adulthood. This pastoral care study is an investigation of the effects of marital conflict and abuse of children. It seeks to give answers to questions like: <ul> <li> How does traumatic conflict and abuse within a marriage impact on the lives of the children?</li> <li> Does this traumatic conflict and abuse affect the children to continue the cycle of violence in their own homes when they grow up?</li> <li> How can a child who grew up within an abusive and violent environment care pastorally for those who are in conflict and abusive marriages?</li> </ul> The researcher is a child who grew up in an environment of traumatic conflict and abuse with the marriage of his parents. He now ministers in the Methodist Church of Southern Africa. In his pastoral care ministry, he encounters people who go through the devastation of traumatic abuse and violence in their own marriages. As a caregiver, he struggles to minister effectively to such people because he finds himself being traumatized again by his past, as well as their experiences. This study aims to heal the author of the traumatic wounds he sustained while growing up. It also aims to help probationer ministers, like himself, who grew up in a traumatizing environment. Finally, it aims to come up with a pastoral care methodology that the Methodist Church of Southern Africa could use in order to empower her ministers who may have grown up in dysfunctional environments as a result of abuse, trauma and violence. The author undertakes this study with the assumption that people who suffered traumatically in their childhood cannot minister effectively to those that come seeking for help. The findings of this study will therefore heal the ministers of the hurt and pain they sustained while growing up, and help the Methodist Church of Southern Africa to care for its ministers so that they can be effective in their ministry towards victims of traumatic conflict, abuse and violence within their parent’s marriages.